NEWARK - When temperatures soared back into the 90s this past week, Julia Holtz went on high alert.

Holtz, who started her nursing career in the emergency room, has seen the stress extreme heat can put on a body. As temperatures rose, schools were forced to close early and postpone sporting events.

Concerns about heart health in students, however, does not just end when the mercury drops to an average level for the final days of summer. A catastrophic cardiac situation can pop up in the healthiest people, and that is the reason for a rare added component to Licking Memorial Health Systems' sports screening program.

"It's about educating the community and keeping our kids safe on the field because there are no warning signs necessarily that they experience prior to that," said Holtz, LMH's quality manager/student coordinator. "Or if there are warning signs, many times they can be explained away because, 'I just got overheated,' or 'I got light-headed when I was exercising.' Those are early warning signs we don't always take heed to."

LMH has partnered with mCORE to provide an echocardiogram and EKG for athletes in grades seven through 12 as a part of the traditional physical each summer. It provides one more extensive check before putting a child into the game.

"At any point of time if there is an unknown heart issue, when there is too much stress placed on the heart, they can go into an abnormal rhythm that can cause them to have a sudden event that needs to be addressed immediately," said Dr. Rob Baun, the medical director for the sports screening program. "We are also looking for situations where the muscles of the heart become too strong in which case it can actually block some blood flow from the heart."

The Heart to Play initiative has waved red flags for a few students each year. A frequent condition found is Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which causes a dangerous rapid heartbeat.

"Even with our kids, a lot of times they are young enough that we don't think about pre-existing conditions or family history that can impact them," Holtz said. "There are things we can find on the heart screening that they had no idea and no symptoms leading up to that or maybe slight symptoms when they are exercising ... and maybe it's their heart saying, 'Hey, help me here. I am not giving enough oxygen,' and it's something we need to investigate further."

It was easy to get the green light from Licking Memorial President & CEO Rob Montagnese more than a decade ago. Montagnese, himself, had children playing youth sports, and he also has been a coach, seeing firsthand how heart issues kept athletes off the playing fields.

For treating Wolff-Parkinson-White, surgery is not always necessary, but corrective action can limit future risk and give athletes an opportunity to resume their career after just a few weeks of recovery.

"The majority of these things are not detectable except through these tests, and most or many of these student-athletes are asymptomatic," Montagnese said. "They don't have any inclination or idea these things are wrong. These tests identify things that are potentially hidden or not known, and unfortunately throughout the country, you have cases where the first time it's identified is after a catastrophic event."

While the heart screenings are done most commonly during LMH's own physical exams at the pediatric complex on Tamarack Road in Newark, parents can schedule a time during the summer months for a screening if a physical was performed at another location.

Heart to Play combined with LMH's ImPACT program designed to prevent and quickly treat concussions has kept local physicians and athletic trainers at the forefront of improvements in care of young athletes.

"What we are doing now isn't necessarily going to stop the ones where it's really hot and they have been getting heat exhaustion because people always have to be aware of that," Baun said. "Us screening them for a heart condition and doing good physicals is not going to prevent those dangers, but us doing this will help prevent that basketball player dribbling down the court who all of a sudden drops. If we can prevent some of those, that's the goal."